Cheap unusual banking?

[Rogue Planet]

I know it sounds stupid since the system could be cheated, but let me explain. Say someone has an unusual they don't want, but they could make money off of. They can't find an easy buyer off of backpack.tf for now, so they now have a hat they don't want, and he/she doesn't know anyone who wants it. This is where the banking part comes in. Scrap.tf could have a system where they store the unusual up in the display, much like backpack.tf, only they don't have to worry about keeping it and having to worry about it. It's a psychological pain to have to keep something you know you don't want, making you soon go on random trade servers, spending time on trying to find anyone with a price, making you get desperate, making the price lower and lower, until it's dirt cheap. If Scrap.tf made a system where they set it up in pages for someone who wants, say a unusual blighted beak, they look at it, say they want it, purchase it right there, and don't have to worry about trade offers. Scrap.tf will pocket some ref (or keys depending on the price) by having the seller get 95% and Scrap.tf a small 5% of it to help out the website. (Just a thought)

This is basically the Steam Community Market only quicker, less price demanding, and in TF2 economics. Thanks for reading.

[Saxton Hale (Real)]

sounds like the auctions, but for unusuals only

[Bat-Country | ScrapTF]

You are very well explaining why unusual banking will never work out. An unusual is exactly worth what someone else is willing to pay. There is absolutely no way to determine a price the bots would pay you.

The prices on backpack.tf for unusuals always only reflect the most recent trades (if at all), Steam Market prices are not reliable for this matter.

If there would be any unusual service, it would be just like any random quickbuyer on any random trade server. You would get the absolute minimum worth for your hat, so the risk of never getting a return on this unusual (since no one would be willing to pay more for it, since the prices for an unusual are ALWAYS determined when the buyer and the seller agree on a price after a very long and exhaustive discussion, often involving sweets or overpays in items.

 

TLDR: The volume of unusual trades is not high enough to give reliable price values for specific hats. The only solution would be flat pay of, for example, 5 keys for ANY unusual.

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Edit: You classified system has been tried many times already. We once had bounties, which were constantly abused and didnt work out. Then we had auctions, which were constantly abused and then got closed.

Unusual Trading is personal. It involves emotions, it involves subjectivity, tastes and interpretative "themes". No automated site could do that for you, all that would happen is the Classifieds section being overfilled with people asking for their surreal high Buyouts based on some outdated bible.tf price, with an added premium because "this hat has become rarer now, there havent been any trades for it for 8 months so it must be more expensive now".

 

Edited July 4, 2015 by ScrapTF | Bat-Country